SAP Doubles Staff in Brazil to Capture Growth Opportunities

May 31 (Bloomberg) -- SAP AG, the world’s largest business-management software maker, has doubled its staff in Brazil in
the past 18 months and is hiring more people to capture growth
opportunities in Latin America’s biggest economy.

“We have to grow our footprint in this country,” said
SAP’s Chief Financial Officer Werner Brandt in an interview
today at the company’s office in Sao Paulo. Brazil is among the
company’s biggest markets in terms of revenue from the software
business, he added.

Since the beginning of 2011, SAP has hired 698 people in
Brazil, bringing its headcount to 1,533 by the end of March this
year, company-provided data shows. This year alone, SAP hired
264 people in Brazil. SAP will “continue to hire” in 2012,
said Brandt, who didn’t provide more details.

The Walldorf, Germany-based company aims to increase sales
to 20 billion euros ($24.7 billion) by 2015, with growth driven
by mobile products, services and data analysis software.
Emerging markets will play an important role in achieving this
target, according to Brandt.

“It’s very important that we not only deliver solutions to
the market, but that we deliver solutions that were developed
here, for this market,” he said.

SAP, which agreed to pay at least $7.7 billion in two
acquisitions since December to strengthen its position in the
cloud-computing market, doesn’t see any potential target in
Brazil, the executive also said.

The company earlier this month agreed to buy Ariba Inc.,
based in Sunnyvale, California, to add a cloud-computing
applications maker to its businesses, in a transaction valued at
about $4.3 billion. In December, it acquired SuccessFactors
Inc., a maker of online personnel management applications, for
$3.4 billion.

SAP will pursue partnership with other developers in Brazil
and in Latin America to integrate local know-how to better serve
clients, Brandt said.